


All The Small Things

by My_Trex_has_fleas



Series: Land and Sea [31]
Category: Poldark - All Media Types, Return to Treasure Island (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Explicit Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 00:37:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4726199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Trex_has_fleas/pseuds/My_Trex_has_fleas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim thinks about Ross.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Small Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to Morning Glory.

Jim was a man of details. Details were what had kept his child’s brain awake through countless evenings, sitting up by himself playing or doing puzzles in the middle of the night. Later, when his teenage insomnia got so bad it would keep him awake for days at a time, details were what kept him from going crazy. Programming and statistics and complex algebraic problems, calculus and physics – those were the things that soothed his mind and made him relax to the point that he could actually go to sleep. 

His devils were always in the details.

And it was the details that he missed while he was away and that he basked in when he is home.

It started in the mornings with the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes from his usual vantage point behind Ross’ back. It was the mole on Ross’ right shoulder, the sharp contrast of his dark brown hair with his pale skin. And when Jim pressed his nose to Ross’ skin and smelled his earthy natural smell, it had the same effect on his mind that all his puzzles used to have. It calmed him and stilled him and Jim would be able to just lie there and breathe him in until he fell asleep again. 

And then, if he persisted in nuzzling the back of Ross’ neck, eventually he would be rewarded with Ross turning to face him and then he could look into his sleepy hazel eyes. Jim loved Ross’ eyes and how they were always changing colour depending on what he was wearing or where he was standing or how the light hit them. Some days they were as dark as peat water, others they were the warm glow of single malt whiskey. Jim loved them best when they were variegated, the flecks of gold and green catching the light and glowing iridescent. And Jim would watch them change and flicker as the morning progressed until he got to see the pupils dilate, watch as those hazel eyes widened and locked on his when Jim rode Ross until he came and then they fell closed. 

Ross’ face was an endless fascination to him, the details of his features all blending seamlessly into what was all that was pleasing to Jim. He’d always appreciated beauty in other men, but Ross was perfection to his eyes. Some mornings he would wake with Ross already on his right side facing him, and Jim would take the opportunity to run his fingertip along the strong line of his jaw, feeling the rasp of dark stubble under his skin. He’d run one thumb along the shapely dark eyebrow, the hair soft and smooth until he got to the scar running down Ross’ face. The skin was different here, the texture not as refined as the rest of his skin. Jim had gotten into the habit of tracing it from eyebrow to where it stopped just shy of the full mouth. 

And that was the detail that Jim loved best. 

Ross’ mouth. It was wide and generous and beautifully shaped, promising a whole plethora of filthy delights, and Jim could stare at it for hours if he was allowed to. He’d never expected to be quite as obsessed with it as he was, but one look at it whether Ross was smiling or sulking was enough to get him going like nothing else did. And when that mouth was around his cock with those dark eyes looking up at him, Jim knew that he would never be able to accept anything less than Ross ever again. 

Yes, Ross was very good with his mouth.

It didn’t stop there though. Jim’s quest in pinpointing all the details that made up Ross found further study as his eyes moved down from his face to the elegant line of collar bone and chest, his shoulders broad without being bulky. He loved the feel of Ross’ thick body hair, and the way it mapped out the contours of his pectoral muscles and stomach all the way down to where it thickened and curled around his cock. He loved the long arms and legs, Ross’ slender fingers that were as adept at the controls of a Challenger Mark II or wielding a polo mallet with delicacy enough to send the ball haring into goal. Those clever fingers, which had a knack for seeking out the spots of his own body that made him screech with laughter and beg for mercy as Ross tickled him when he thought Jim had been ignoring him for too long while reading on the sofa or gazing out the car window. But Jim loved them best when they were inside him, slick with lube and stroking so gently that he felt like he was going to die from the pleasure of it, or hard and unforgiving as they drove into him and made him see stars. 

But his fingers were only the start of it. Jim kept going, moving further to the hair at Ross’ groin where his natural smell is strongest, collecting in the crease between thigh and body. If Jim licked along this line it made Ross shudder and tense, and if he bit just hard enough Jim was pretty sure that he could make Ross come from just that. It wasn't just there though. In his catalogue of details, Jim had built up an extensive list of all the things that made Ross lose his breath or moan in the deep rumbling way of his.

The usual hot spots were Jim’s, ears and neck and hair. But Ross’ were more esoteric. He did love Jim’s nails down his back, but he also loved having his elbows nibbled. It was one of the really odd things about him and also one of the completely endearing traits that Ross had. Jim knew that Ross’ nipples were super sensitive, and he always paid them due attention. But it took him a while to learn that the same effect could be had from running a thumb along the line of Ross’ calf to the back of his knee, something that only came about from massaging the bad leg when it got cold and the plates and screws inside ached from the weather. Or that if you did the same thing to the palms of Ross’ hands, he would do anything you asked him to.

But all these things were physical. Jim was interested in them because they belonged to Ross, but he did not love them in isolation from the most important thing which was Ross himself.

Ross had strange little quirks and habits that had only really come out once they had started living together the first time and then again when they moved into their home, and they had made Jim’s study of the man he loved all the more fascinating. On the face of it, Ross was easy to read. He only really vascillated between easy good humour and brooding. Anger and frustration translated themselves into sullen silence and Jim had soon learned that a Poldark sulk was black indeed. It was also something that required delicate handling. Too much consideration was seen as coddling and stubbornly rejected, so it was down to details once again. Jim knew that small gestures were the best way to combat Ross’ sulks and he’d learned enough of the little things his soldier valued to make sure they were given to him. 

Things like catering to Ross’ unexplained love of pickled onion Monster Munch and cheese sandwiches, making them for him when even the very smell of the things made Jim gag. Or the Times handed over to him at breakfast, folded in three which Jim now knew was a legacy of growing up in the Poldark household. Or a walk down the footpath in the woodlands behind their cottage that ran next to the paddocks of the stud farm next door so Ross could call the thoroughbreds over to the fence and feed them illicit sugar lumps and stroke their sleek noses. Jim should have suspected that the man who loved riding around in tanks was a not so secret horse lover. 

One or a combination of these things would normally dispel the black cloud hanging over Ross’ head, and if it didn’t there were other things that Jim could do for him. There was a reason for the butcher’s hooks fixed in the ceiling of the room downstairs, secrets that required Jim to buy linen and jute rope in great coils and the reason that he now knew over sixty different types of knots, a new catalogue of which ones would work best to immobilise or suspend a heavy weight.

There would be long afternoons, leading into evening when Jim would be able to bring out those other details, the ones no-one got to see but him. The gleam of sweat on Ross’ skin, the sound of his strained breathing and the smell of musk and arousal coming off him in waves as he begged and whined for Jim to do the things he craved to him. The beautiful flush of a handprint on Ross’ face and the challenge in those dark eyes as he tried to provoke Jim into hitting him again. The sudden change in the quality of his moans when Jim pulled him by the hair, or his inarticulate cries as Jim fucked him on the floor or as he hung from the ceiling by his hands, tendons standing out and his muscles thrown into relief. The smell of his semen on Jim’s chest and the beautiful smile that Jim got at the end of it that told him Ross was back inside himself. 

‘Hey.’ The voice was accompanied by a prod from Ross’ bare foot. Jim focused and looked over his book at where Ross was sitting at the opposite end of the sofa. ‘I’m bored. Let’s go do something.’

‘Anything you want, baby.’ Jim replied with a smile.


End file.
